Due to an acute shortage of professional truck drivers the German trucking association has launched a new project to train asylum seekers for the job, Austria’s tabloid Wochenblick reports.

The project, which is named “The drive into your new future” intends to make it easier for asylum seekers to become truck drivers.

In this way, the German Red Cross (DRK) and the Logistics Organization (UVL) want to alleviate the shortage of truck drivers. The concept was developed together with the SVG Driving School North, reports newspaper DVZ.

During the training the candidates have to pass through two exams. In addition to its general suitability, the DRK also wants to check the language skills and the status of residence. In addition, a separate “refugee representative” should look after the participants during the three-year training.

The initiative is extremely popular: “Within a few days, 90 interested parties from all over Schleswig-Holstein and even from Hamburg have reported that 50 more refugees have been placed on a waiting list,” says Ilka Hübner, the head of the Red Cross in Kiel.

But not everyone is happy. “We clearly say no,” says the president of the Federal Association of professional motor vehicle associations, Wolfgang Westermann. “You can not put everyone on a forty-ton and let them go with it,” he says.

It’s unclear how the German public thinks about the initiative. On 19 December 2016 asylum seeker Anis Amri drove a truck deliberately into a Christmas market in Berlin leaving 12 people dead and 56 injured.